


Letting You Go

by razorblade456



Category: The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 03A, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 08:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5735920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/razorblade456/pseuds/razorblade456
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Callie attempts to do what she thinks is the right thing for Brandon, but it doesn't really go according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting You Go

Brandon walked through the front door, headed towards the stairs, when Callie came up beside him.

“Brandon, I need to talk to you,” she said, touching his arm.

“Callie, I really don’t have–” Brandon began, frustrated, but trailed off when he saw her face.

It looked like it was set in stone– serious, calm– but in her eyes, a maelstrom of emotion. Panic shot through his gut as he grew very still. “What happened? Has anyone–”

She shook her head and attempted to offer a soothing smile. “No, nothing like that. Everyone is fine, but I really need to talk to you. It’s important.”

The panic didn’t go away, twisting cold and heavy in his stomach, and his heartbeat grew loud in his ears. He nodded his agreement and followed Callie to the backyard.

The sky was a clear, California blue, the sun still bright into the late September day. She led him to the far side of the wooden bench near the big tree, as tucked away from potentially peering eyes as possible. They sat turned toward each other, their knees inches apart.

Callie gazed at him for a long, sad moment, and Brandon knew something was very, very wrong.

“I’ve realized,–” her voice cracked. She looked down at her hands that were twisting and pulling in her lap. “I try to take care of everyone else; it’s time I took care of you.— I have to let you go.”

Despite the sun shining down, Brandon felt very cold. “I don’t understand,” he stuttered. “What do you mean—”

“We can’t keep straddling the line thinking that we can hold on to a part of what we have,” she said, as if explaining a death in the family to a small child. “We eventually make it back to now, and I hurt you all over again. You’re right– We can’t be together in this. Any of it.”

At first he was dumbstruck– the words themselves making sense to him but not in the order she put them in. He raked his hands along his thighs, the denim jeans course under his fingers. A welcoming heat burned through his veins when her words finally clicked into place.

With steel in his voice, he countered, “I didn’t mean it like—”

“I know,” she soothed, her words coated in pity, “but it has to be this way.”

Her gazed traced along his face, a painful resolve reflecting back at him. Fear, bordering on desperation, thundered in his chest.

Her bottom lip quivered, as she looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed and glassy. “Somehow, you’ve grown to be a part of me, and I keep coming to you when my world falls apart because with you, I know it will all be okay. I need you, Brandon. I’ve never needed someone before, not like this, and it has to stop.” She pressed her lips tight against each other, closed her eyes, and took another breath. Filled with sincerity, she continued, “I have to stop leaning on you. I have to let you go.— I need to remember how to stand on my own again.”

He swallowed heavily. “I— You’re talking like we’ll never see each other again. We live in the same house, Callie.”

“That’s why it’s so important to make the divide ourselves,” she replied simply. “Last time, we had places to go to heal on our own, but we didn’t. We didn’t heal at all– we just went through the motions, pretending that it didn’t matter, because at least in some ways we had each other.”

A light wind blew through the trees, a soft shush of brushing leaves. The breeze pulled on loose tendrils of her brown hair, the pieces dancing across her cheek. The tips of his fingers tingled, recalling the familiar feel of her hair as he’d brush it behind her ear.

His brow furrowed, while he searched her face for answers. “I don’t understand. Are you saying we can’t be friends anymore? We’re part of the same family.”

She sighed, as if his failure to understand wounded her. “It has to be all or nothing, Brandon. If it isn’t, you’ll always hold a place for me. You’ll never give yourself fully to someone else, because–” she spoke into his eyes, love and pain in equal measures reflected in hers, “you’ll always be mine, and I’ll always be yours. You can’t be mine anymore.”

“You’re over-reacting,” he insisted, his mind reeling.

“Am I? We can’t keep doing this, but we do. We keep doing it,” she said knowingly, cutting him with his own words. “Because what we feel only happens once in a lifetime.” With a single tear and sad resolve, she pressed the final nail. “If I’m over-reacting– tell me you don’t love me anymore.”

He couldn’t, just like she couldn’t that night. “That’s not fair, Callie,” he whispered. “I haven’t had enough time to–”

“You’re right, it isn’t fair, and there will never be enough time if we keep going this way,” she insisted. “All this time, I haven’t been fair to you, but now–now I need to be.” She tilted her head to the side, and placed her hand on his chest. “I love you, Brandon. All of me. Fully. It’s time I gave you what you need to let go of me. You’re free.”

His eyes narrowed and his vision blurred. “You don’t have control of that,” he growled. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel.”

“No, I don’t, but I can stop feeding the flames.” Callie pulled her hand away, laced her fingers together, and squeezed her hands between her knees. “Hard to cling to something that isn’t there.”

Of course, she’d take it to the extreme, he thought. His breath was choppy, and anger rippled through him. “We see each other everyday. What you’re saying is impossible! —Or are you planning to run away again?”

“Of course, not. It would defeat the purpose of what I’m doing right now.” She sighed from deep inside her bones. “We’ll be two people that so happen to live under the same roof. You’ll live your life. I’ll live mine. We’re both so busy, I doubt anyone will really notice. Talk to each other only when we have to, like two strangers might. Polite but distant.”

“It won’t work,” he asserted.

“Only if you fight it,” she murmured. “I’m giving you what you wanted; this is just making the lines clear. It’s not your job to save me anymore. What happens to me from here on out is for me to figure out on my own.”

With a flippant shrug, he demanded, “So what? You’re back to trusting no one again? How well did that work out for you?”

“Brandon,” she exhaled.

“No, Callie. You don’t get to decide–”

“This wasn’t a discussion,” she replied, lips pinched as she held her emotions with tight reigns. “I’m telling you, the cycle ends now.”

Before he could argue more, Stef shouted from the sliding glass door, “Kids, dinner’s ready.”

Callie cleared the tears from her eyes, her face shifting into a smile, then leaned out so she could be seen from around the tree. “We’ll be right there!” she bellowed back, her voice normal and bright. She stood up and looked back at him, the smile firmly in place, her eyes unreadable. “Time to go.”

He remembered seeing this expression months ago from afar, but he didn’t understand it then. He thought it meant their breakup didn’t hurt her like it hurt him, but it wasn’t true. She was giving the world this face–the outside of her walls.

Brandon thought he knew what it was like to be shut out by Callie. He remembered the loneliness, the emptiness, but he really had no idea– until this moment. To free him, he was now on the other side like everyone else, and it hurt more than anything before. It was like a shard of ice cutting through him, slicing his insides, followed by a cold burn. It was hard enough to lock away what he felt for her. What she was suggesting was like cutting off his hand. She was as much a part of him as he was of her.

It felt like every word he had said to her was being used as weapons against him. What he wanted wasn’t this. He’d believed he would give up anything, do anything, for her– but this, he didn’t believe he could do this. He could never let her go.

“Then I choose nothing,” he shouted at her back.

Callie’s head drooped, and beseeching, she whispered, “Brandon, don’t do this.”

He stood tall, hands fisted at his side. “You said it was all or nothing. Well, I choose nothing.”

She turned, her venere already cracking–frustration narrowing her eyes. “How, Brandon? How would that work?”

“I don’t know, Callie,” he sneered. “You’re the one making the rules!”

“I’m not!” she cried back, tears spilling–walls already crumbling. She stomped toward him, until they were inches apart. “Do you think I want to do this? You’re everything, Brandon– don’t you get that?! You’ve changed me irrevocably, and this feels like I’m cutting my own heart out.”

“If it hurts,” he snarled, his body shaking with everything building inside him, “then why are you doing it?”

“Because this cycle is killing us both!” she yelled, a storm of pain and anger swirling in her eyes. She gripped the sleeves of his overshirt, twisting the fabric around her knuckles. “Brandon, I love you, and it will never stop. I’ll always want you. I’ll always need you. And all it will take is one moment where we’re weak or broken, and we’ll be right back here. Only who knows how bad the damage will be next time.”

The answer was as simple as it was dangerous. The fallout immense, but he was as tired of this back and forth as she was. With what felt like the sweetest of surrenders, he whispered, “Then we break the cycle.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she sobbed, shaking him.

He gently tugged her hands, moving them to around his neck, and with one hand cupped her face. “No, we stop letting each other go.”

Her mouth pulled down into a hard frown, her chin quivering. “It’s too late,” she wept, the words breaking from within. “I can’t back out now, not after what I’ve put everyone through to get here. It would devastate Moms, and I can’t—”

“Stop, Callie,” he begged, his thumb casting a soft arc along her cheek. “For once in your life, think about what you want and only what you want. Forget everyone else. What would make you happy, Callie?”

She gripped the back of his neck, and her face fell, sorrow pulling at every inch.

“That’s what I thought,” he murmured and pulled her hard against him.

She shook in his arms, her breathing hard shudders as she tried to hold herself together. “How?,” she mumbled into his chest. “How do we–?

“We’ll figure something out,” he assured. He squeezed her hard, burying his nose into her hair. “Callie, I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. I love you, and that’s me. That’s my feelings. You don’t get to take responsibility for them, okay?”

She nodded, her fingers sliding into his hair.

They stood, gently swaying side to side. Brandon breathed her in, the familiar sweet smell soothing his tumultuous insides. He felt like he experienced a full year in less than an hour, and only with her in his arms did he feel right. Whole.

“I don’t want to let go,” she said, her breath warm through his shirt.

He smiled, kissed the top of her head, and looked up— right into his mother’s eyes.


End file.
